Telecommunications networks are widely used to link various types of nodes, such as personal computers, servers, gateways, network telephones, and so forth. Networks may include private networks, such as local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WAN), and public networks, such as the Internet. Such networks can also be circuit-switched networks in which network resources are dedicated for the entire duration of a data call, and/or packet-switch networks, such as Internet Protocol (IP) networks in which network resources are shared and data in the form of packets or cells are routed independently across the networks along with other user traffic to a destination. Examples of packet-switched networks include Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks, Ethernet or Frame Relay, which are based on a virtual circuit model. Popular forms of communications across such networks include electronic mail, file transfer, web browsing, and other exchange of digital data including audio (e.g., voice) and multimedia (e.g., audio and video).
Modern telecommunications networks typically include two related but separate network infrastructures: a bearer or transmission network for carrying end-user voice and data traffic, and a signaling network for controlling the setup and release of bearer channels through the bearer network in accordance with control signals transferred through the signaling network. In practice, such signaling networks comprise high-speed computers interconnected by signaling links, and computer programs implemented to provide a set of operational and signaling functions in accordance with a standardized protocol, such as, for example, the Signalling System No. 7 (SS7) which is being extensively deployed for control of mobile telephony and other data transmission networks. The signaling links are used for passing signaling information (e.g., messages) between nodes in the signaling networks. The signaling information (e.g., messages) can be captured to generate detail records, such as Call Detail Records (CDRs) or Transaction Detail Records (TDRs), for storage in a database system which can be subsequently monitored and analyzed for a wide variety of applications, including, for example, quality of service applications and business intelligence applications. In addition to the detail records, other related information-sent between nodes, switches or devices in such mobile networks can also be used for authentication, equipment identification and roaming enablement.
Commercially available tools for mobile telephony networks may be used for monitoring the performance (or quality) of a network based on the detail records stored in the database system to observe possible obstacles and track performance statistics in the network. Typically, such monitoring tools are based on monitoring the network for malfunctions at the level of network elements, such as switches or interfaces, for traffic-related information. However, such actions will result in the collection of vast amounts of data, which makes it difficult and time consuming for an end user attempting to identify problems in the network and perform analysis of the collected data, especially when the detail records are being viewed in real time. The detail records, such as Call Detail Records (CDRs), may be dissimilar, i.e., may have different types of criteria used regarding values captured for the particular CDRs, according to several factors such as the monitoring point in the network at which the respective detail records are captured, the different protocols being used to set up and transport voice and data calls in the network, different types and brands of equipment used to transport the voice and data calls, etc. Therefore, with the different protocols and equipment and the plurality of different monitoring points in the network at which this information is captured, as well as the vast amount of detail records that may be captured at each of these monitoring points, the information quickly becomes overwhelming, at least partly due to the fact that there are dissimilar detail records, i.e., detail records having different attributes, captured.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved tools, systems and methods for the management and analysis of detail records in such networks, including the ability to provide a user with a way to view the various dissimilar CDRs on an aggregated basis, wherein the CDRs may be presented in a high level view in a simplified format according to attributes that are common to all the dissimilar CDRs.